Peter Garbett
@petergarbett.bsky.social
Retired software engineer on jet engine control systems . Owned by a small dog and partner. #fbpe and liberal enough to be occasionally annoyed by the Liberals. Watches mathologer videos and Tim Hunkin drilling holes .
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Rachel Reeves says she’s ending “Motability tax breaks”.
Sounds like she’s cracking down on luxury cars, right?
That’s not what’s happening.
These changes raise costs for all disabled people on the scheme, including those with the cheapest cars.
Here’s how. 👇🧵
Sounds like she’s cracking down on luxury cars, right?
That’s not what’s happening.
These changes raise costs for all disabled people on the scheme, including those with the cheapest cars.
Here’s how. 👇🧵
November 26, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Rachel Reeves says she’s ending “Motability tax breaks”.
Sounds like she’s cracking down on luxury cars, right?
That’s not what’s happening.
These changes raise costs for all disabled people on the scheme, including those with the cheapest cars.
Here’s how. 👇🧵
Sounds like she’s cracking down on luxury cars, right?
That’s not what’s happening.
These changes raise costs for all disabled people on the scheme, including those with the cheapest cars.
Here’s how. 👇🧵
Reposted by Peter Garbett
The honest truth is that our entire political spectrum (bar the Greens, the SNP, and the Lib Dems) are wholesale bought into racism. Lies about foreigners, conflating refugees and immigrants, just stuff that twenty years ago was a deal breaker
October 23, 2025 at 8:33 AM
The honest truth is that our entire political spectrum (bar the Greens, the SNP, and the Lib Dems) are wholesale bought into racism. Lies about foreigners, conflating refugees and immigrants, just stuff that twenty years ago was a deal breaker
Reposted by Peter Garbett
"The honest truth is"
I feel sick
I feel sick
"The honest truth is that people come to this country because they believe we are more generous than other European countries"
- little evidence for this claim
+ good evidence against it
We will "ensure we are no longer the destination of choice"
- v hard to give a definition that this is accurate
- little evidence for this claim
+ good evidence against it
We will "ensure we are no longer the destination of choice"
- v hard to give a definition that this is accurate
October 23, 2025 at 8:31 AM
"The honest truth is"
I feel sick
I feel sick
Reposted by Peter Garbett
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
Reposted by Peter Garbett
The BBC's has responded in The Guardian that this was a routine editorial decision, but also that it was made on legal advice. Those two explanations don’t fit together. /1
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 2:40 PM
The BBC's has responded in The Guardian that this was a routine editorial decision, but also that it was made on legal advice. Those two explanations don’t fit together. /1
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Here's the transcript. When I say ‘we had a convicted reality star’, you can add ‘who now rules as the most openly corrupt president in American history’ in your head.
downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith...
downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith...
November 25, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Here's the transcript. When I say ‘we had a convicted reality star’, you can add ‘who now rules as the most openly corrupt president in American history’ in your head.
downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith...
downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith...
Reposted by Peter Garbett
I think this sums up Blue Labour to a tee: someone experiences, or shares a human tragedy, and you feel sad for them, but equally it doesn’t give them license to tear up 600 years of information about what drives prosperity and replace it with saying the word “relational” a lot.
There are some truly unhinged bits in the piece about Glasman, as to be expected when dealing with Glasman, but seriously what the actual? That's...one hell of a conflation of terminology.
November 23, 2025 at 4:11 PM
I think this sums up Blue Labour to a tee: someone experiences, or shares a human tragedy, and you feel sad for them, but equally it doesn’t give them license to tear up 600 years of information about what drives prosperity and replace it with saying the word “relational” a lot.
Look what I found yesterday. Our copy of this, sent to every household.
November 22, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Look what I found yesterday. Our copy of this, sent to every household.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
This is a clown-car government elected on a seriousness ticket iandunt.substack.com/p/a-clown-go...
November 21, 2025 at 12:08 PM
This is a clown-car government elected on a seriousness ticket iandunt.substack.com/p/a-clown-go...
Reposted by Peter Garbett
I’m particularly angry today with all those people who attacked us for daring to challenge Laura Kuenssberg, implying we were misogynistic and unfair.
No.
She, together with Peston et al, played a key role in Boris Johnson’s ‘success’.
No.
She, together with Peston et al, played a key role in Boris Johnson’s ‘success’.
November 21, 2025 at 12:24 PM
I’m particularly angry today with all those people who attacked us for daring to challenge Laura Kuenssberg, implying we were misogynistic and unfair.
No.
She, together with Peston et al, played a key role in Boris Johnson’s ‘success’.
No.
She, together with Peston et al, played a key role in Boris Johnson’s ‘success’.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
This government has not taken a single meaningful step to tackle the causes of the horrendous inefficiencies in the criminal justice system, instead rushing to dismantle trial by jury.
Legal professionals have offered numerous alternatives to address the backlog.
Ministers are not listening.
Legal professionals have offered numerous alternatives to address the backlog.
Ministers are not listening.
MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul
MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul
Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog
*
UK politics live – latest updates
Criminals will be stopped from “gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing, the courts minister has said, promising to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election.
Drug dealers and career criminals were “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial, Sarah Sackman told the Guardian, saying inaction would be a road to “chaos and ruin”. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
November 21, 2025 at 7:57 AM
This government has not taken a single meaningful step to tackle the causes of the horrendous inefficiencies in the criminal justice system, instead rushing to dismantle trial by jury.
Legal professionals have offered numerous alternatives to address the backlog.
Ministers are not listening.
Legal professionals have offered numerous alternatives to address the backlog.
Ministers are not listening.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Ooooooof
The Labour government will deteriorate from here on.ft.com/449jsRK | opinion
The Labour government will deteriorate from here
Starmer and Reeves are unfit and their likeliest usurpers are worse
on.ft.com
November 19, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Ooooooof
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Plans to leave refugees in a state of perpetual uncertainty about where and if they can rebuild their lives are not just performative cruelty, they are counterproductive to integration and the economy. It doesn’t have to be like this - 1/2
November 17, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Plans to leave refugees in a state of perpetual uncertainty about where and if they can rebuild their lives are not just performative cruelty, they are counterproductive to integration and the economy. It doesn’t have to be like this - 1/2
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Obviously, the way to understand this is as an avant garde performance of post modernism in a political context. Imagine the political world is entirely constructed from a series of different moving planes that - crucially - lack any sort of referential depth. In other words, it’s pure performance.
The government seems to be trying to simultaneously claim it can deliver Reform’s agenda better than Reform, while also about once a month sending out someone to decry Reform’s racism.
It’s genuinely sort of amazing that they still haven’t realised why that doesn’t work.
It’s genuinely sort of amazing that they still haven’t realised why that doesn’t work.
November 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Obviously, the way to understand this is as an avant garde performance of post modernism in a political context. Imagine the political world is entirely constructed from a series of different moving planes that - crucially - lack any sort of referential depth. In other words, it’s pure performance.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
This is what many of us have been saying. Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill is based on a myth: that we don't have enough homes because wildlife and green spaces are protected. It will solve nothing, and inflict terrible harm on our remaining ecosystems
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Nature not a blocker to housing growth, inquiry finds
Commons committee report challenges ‘lazy narrative’ used by ministers that scapegoats wildlife and the environment
www.theguardian.com
November 16, 2025 at 12:12 PM
This is what many of us have been saying. Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill is based on a myth: that we don't have enough homes because wildlife and green spaces are protected. It will solve nothing, and inflict terrible harm on our remaining ecosystems
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Reposted by Peter Garbett
As Marx would have said:
Musk has only read these books in various ways; the point, however, is to understand them
Musk has only read these books in various ways; the point, however, is to understand them
history will ultimately decide this but i think joyce carol oates might have just landed the most devastating burn in human history. like the death star trench run of posting
oh my god
November 10, 2025 at 8:39 PM
As Marx would have said:
Musk has only read these books in various ways; the point, however, is to understand them
Musk has only read these books in various ways; the point, however, is to understand them
Reposted by Peter Garbett
The fact that Joyce Carol Oates clearly loves beating the shit out of Musk invites us, the readers, to revisit and reconsider our assessment of her famous work, "On Boxing".
“whatever club he’s invited to join has been devalued by the invitation”
November 11, 2025 at 6:58 AM
The fact that Joyce Carol Oates clearly loves beating the shit out of Musk invites us, the readers, to revisit and reconsider our assessment of her famous work, "On Boxing".
Reposted by Peter Garbett
I also wish people would spell out the alternative proposal here.
"We should have kept tariffs and capital restrictions on China skyhigh in the hopes it never became a competitive industrial producer, trapping hundreds of millions in subsistance poverty and raising the cost of everything."
"We should have kept tariffs and capital restrictions on China skyhigh in the hopes it never became a competitive industrial producer, trapping hundreds of millions in subsistance poverty and raising the cost of everything."
This is also said about Europe's approach to China and I simply don't believe this is true. I was at conferences with senior US folk in the early 2010s and none thought China would become more democratic or liberal.
We thought we could compete.
We thought we could compete.
November 10, 2025 at 9:53 PM
I also wish people would spell out the alternative proposal here.
"We should have kept tariffs and capital restrictions on China skyhigh in the hopes it never became a competitive industrial producer, trapping hundreds of millions in subsistance poverty and raising the cost of everything."
"We should have kept tariffs and capital restrictions on China skyhigh in the hopes it never became a competitive industrial producer, trapping hundreds of millions in subsistance poverty and raising the cost of everything."
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Very interesting piece, including the extract below which has the ring of truth
November 10, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Very interesting piece, including the extract below which has the ring of truth
Reposted by Peter Garbett
It also means a substantial amount of detailed factual programming ends up spiralling off into the world of niche podcasts and Youtube channels rather than formats that are accessible for a mass audience
I go on about 'remember when BBC Parliament was a real channel?', but from a 'protecting the corporation' perspective, the flight from detail both means 'fewer programmes that MPs and the political class themselves directly enjoy' and also 'fewer programmes that the political class appears on'.
It would also have more defenders more readily to say no thats bullshit its a great institution and you can fuck off when facing this kind of assault
November 10, 2025 at 3:29 PM
It also means a substantial amount of detailed factual programming ends up spiralling off into the world of niche podcasts and Youtube channels rather than formats that are accessible for a mass audience
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Headline from a serious and long working paper on the economic impact of Brexit. Possible that this has been feeding into OBR and HMT discussions?
November 10, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Headline from a serious and long working paper on the economic impact of Brexit. Possible that this has been feeding into OBR and HMT discussions?
Reposted by Peter Garbett
If you want to sustain your carefully-cultivated fury at the stupid Panorama edit then don’t, whatever you do, read or listen to Trump’s speech in its entirety…
November 10, 2025 at 7:47 AM
If you want to sustain your carefully-cultivated fury at the stupid Panorama edit then don’t, whatever you do, read or listen to Trump’s speech in its entirety…
Reposted by Peter Garbett
A meta point is that it was Sue Gray who drew up the priority list which reflected existential priorities rather than political ones.
So obviously McSweeney got Starmer to sack her.
And thus was Rohan brought low from the start.
So obviously McSweeney got Starmer to sack her.
And thus was Rohan brought low from the start.
A very good piece from Sam.
It’s important to understand that there is no criminal justice “system”. Rather there are a baffling range of organisations with unaligned objectives, broken systems and no resources desperately struggling around to keep the illusion of a “system” going.
It’s important to understand that there is no criminal justice “system”. Rather there are a baffling range of organisations with unaligned objectives, broken systems and no resources desperately struggling around to keep the illusion of a “system” going.
New post just out:
Why the criminal justice system should be top of No. 10's "shit list".
No part of the public sector is more broken or brings with it greater political risk. As we saw these past two weeks.
It desperately needs a new approach.
(£/free trial)
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/f...
Why the criminal justice system should be top of No. 10's "shit list".
No part of the public sector is more broken or brings with it greater political risk. As we saw these past two weeks.
It desperately needs a new approach.
(£/free trial)
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/f...
November 8, 2025 at 9:39 AM
A meta point is that it was Sue Gray who drew up the priority list which reflected existential priorities rather than political ones.
So obviously McSweeney got Starmer to sack her.
And thus was Rohan brought low from the start.
So obviously McSweeney got Starmer to sack her.
And thus was Rohan brought low from the start.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate" was mostly unspecified magic fairy pixie bullshit then, and it's not going to get any more realistic in the hands of a bunch of Reform clowns who don't know how anything works, don't care to learn and disdain anyone that might.
November 8, 2025 at 9:18 AM
"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate" was mostly unspecified magic fairy pixie bullshit then, and it's not going to get any more realistic in the hands of a bunch of Reform clowns who don't know how anything works, don't care to learn and disdain anyone that might.
Reposted by Peter Garbett
Even better, Number 10 staffers touted the replacement of the whips office as a big win to cheer up disgruntled backbenchers, to the complete bafflement of several. Some of whom then signed up to the “Keir’s gotta go” faction, in sheer frustration.
November 8, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Even better, Number 10 staffers touted the replacement of the whips office as a big win to cheer up disgruntled backbenchers, to the complete bafflement of several. Some of whom then signed up to the “Keir’s gotta go” faction, in sheer frustration.